488219

The Language of Judgment: Primo Levi's "Se questo un uomo"
Author(s): Dalya M. Sachs

Source: MLN, Vol. 110, No. 4, Comparative Literature Issue (Sep., 1995), pp. 755-784
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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The Language of Judgment: Primo
Levi's Se questo e un uomo
Dalya M. Sachs
"I think there are as many ways of surviving

survival as there have been to survive."
-Philip K., quoted in Holocaust Testimonies
In the 1976 Appendix to an annotated edition of Se questo e un uomo*

intended for use in Italian schools, Primo Levi assembled a list of
questions which had been posed to him repeatedly throughout the
decades following the book's initial publication, either in readers'
letters or by students at the innumerable lectures he gave through-
out Italy. Reasoning that the consistency with which he was asked
certain questions was a reflection either of the inadequacy or the
opacity of parts of Se questo e un uomo, Levi published his replies,
point by point, in order to respond to a '"justifiable and logical
curiosity" that somehow had not been satisfactorily answered by the
book itself. He places the following as the first of those eight ques-
tions: "In your book, there are no expressions of hatred for the
Germans, no malice, no yearning for vengeance. Have you par-
doned them?"1'
Levi first offers a personal psychological explanation:
By nature, I am not prone to hatred. I consider it a bestial and primitive

emotion, and I prefer instead that, as far as possible, my actions and
thoughts be based on reason; because of this, I have never harbored
* While the English edition of Se questo e un uomo is for the most part a subtle and
sensitive translation, the title by which Levi's work is presently known, Survival in
Auschwitz, bears no relationship to the original, and is, moreover, a travesty of it. Se
questo e un uomo was originally published in English with the exact equivalent of the
Italian: If This Is a Man.
MLN, 110 (1995): 755-784 ? 1995 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
756 DALYA M. SACHS
hatred, in the sense of a primal urge for revenge, for suffering to be

inflicted upon my real or presumed enemies, or for personal vendetta.2
But later, Levi draws on quite different types of explanation for his
tone, and instead of a psychological motivation, he invokes a nar-
ratological strategy for the absence of any "expressions of hatred":
... in writing this book, I deliberately took on the calm and sober lan-
guage of a witness, not the plaintive tone of a victim nor the outrage of an
avenger: I thought that my words would be most believable and useful
the more they appeared to be objective and the less they sounded fer-
vent. Only in this way does a witness fulfill his function, which is to
prepare the ground for the judges. The judges are all of you.3
That perhaps his personality and sensibility are exemplified in the

tone-as yet only defined as an absence of something (hatred, mal-
ice, and vengeance) -tells us about the origin and particulars of the
text, but this autobiographical solution is in some sense tautologi-
cal, given the autobiographical genesis of the text itself (such a
solution proposes that the text is not one of "hatred, malice and
vengeance" because the mind which organized and transcribed its
experience is not one of "hatred, malice and vengeance"). The first
part of Levi's answer is rendered no less valid, but it is an answer
whose justification and proof is evidenced in the events, descrip-
tions and narration of the text itself.
But the second part of Levi's response speaks of stylization, of the
presumed effect on the readers of certain writerly decisions and
techniques. The first reply explains the cause of the tone; the second
acknowledges the attempt to create a certain effect with it: he wanted
to be heard, and he wanted to put the readers in a certain position
through his "calm and sober language of a witness." This language is
intended to be "believable and useful."
The very fact that Levi wrote this as a response to questions he has
received in response to his book shows that indeed he has been
heard (if not always believed), so his techniques did achieve at least
some of their desired ends. But to understand this effect-namely,
this absence of anger in sensibility and technique-we need to de-
fine what is created in place of anger. Only then can we return to
the second part of Levi's reply, both to see what the implications of
this effect are, beyond positing the readers as judges, and to begin
to frame a response to the questions Levi's work forces us to con-
front.
In the attempt to label the tone that takes the place of anger in Se
MLN 757
questo e un uomo, it may be salutary to keep in mind Robert Musil's

understanding that "there is no total solution, but only a series of
particular ones," because Se questo e un uomo resists any overarching
generic categorization. The difficulty of placing Levi's work firmly
within a single, identifiable genre is displayed well in the remarks of
a typical critic like Lynn M. Gunzberg, who offers this shifting defi-
nition of Se questo e un uomo: "one cannot approach Se questo e un
uomo as if it were fiction. Rather, it is a memoir which reads like a
novel, with a kind of novella... at the end."4 The terms which
Gunzberg associates with Se questo e un uomo, memoir, novel, and
novella, imply different structures, indeed, seemingly mutually ex-
clusive ones. A memoir might be said to be true history, whereas a
novel is necessarily fictional, even though it might be organized as a
memoir. But Levi's book does not function with a single structure at
its foundation: Gunzberg is correct, but far from exhaustive, be-
cause still more genres could be added to the list: it is testimony
(Levi himself often refers to this text as such), commentary, and
essayism, too. Each of these genres is an element of Levi's book, but,
intertwined as they are, they combine to form something other and
new.
The multiplicity of generic definitions of the text is emblematic of

the diversity of techniques which inform it. This is not simply a
memoir, because we do not follow the events of a life chronologi-
cally, but move back and forth among entirely different temporal
strata; nor is it understandable solely in terms of an essay because it
is dense with much testimony and narration, dialogue and anec-
dote. In order to be heard, to be "credibile ed utile," Levi draws on
and blends these genres, creating a book whose tone is not angry,
but instead seeks, through a synthesis of different technical narra-
tive modes and an amalgamation of temporalities, to understand
more about human life and behavior, to record the ambivalence of
an individual's physical and intellectual survival, and to implicate
the readers in that ambivalence. Levi was himself aware of these
structural complexities right from the beginning, as he makes clear
in the 1947 preface to the original edition:
I recognize, and ask indulgence for, the structural defects of the book. Its
origins go back, not indeed in practice, but as an idea, an intention, to
the days in the Lager. . . . The book has been written to satisfy [the]
need . . . first and foremost . .. [for] interior liberation. Hence its frag-
mentary character: the chapters have been written not in a logical succes-
sion, but in order of urgency.5
758 DALYA M. SACHS
Notwithstanding this disclaimer about its formal weaknesses, the

book is not so much "fragmentary" as it is a synthesis of genres and
the voices and temporalities on which they are patterned. Moreover,
the "structural defects" to which Levi refers seem hardly to be de-
fects (and in fact, one wonders whether Levi called them "defects"
in earnest or with a sense of irony) but are instead the residue of
the "urgency" with which Levi needed to make sense of the "days in
the Lager," in order to achieve an "internal liberation." What Levi
claims is not a "logical succession" is, on the contrary, preeminently
logical, since the "order of urgency" provided the motive for making
sense of, as well as the product of coming to understand, the "days
in the Lager."
I. Shifting Voices and Temporal Multiplicity
"Grammar does not possess a final tense."

-Italo Svevo, "An Old Man's Confessions"
No single genre or voice, no pre-established structure, would have

allowed for the variety of experiences and analyses that inform
Levi's response to the implicit questions of his title: Se questo e un
uomo. I say questions in the plural deliberately because the gram-
matical structure of the title is incomplete and therefore inconclu-
sive: it is a fragment, a clause which implies a conclusion to the
proposition "if this is a man." Because Levi does not provide one,
the reader can imagine any phrase to complete the one Levi has
proposed, and this is exactly what Levi wants: not that readers ap-
pend the "right" conclusion or even that they actually append a
conclusion at all, but that they become "participants" in the ethical
dilemmas voiced by the text.6 The title also allows for these di-
lemmas to transcend the time and space of their genesis because it
is disturbingly timeless itself: there is no mention of the specific
historical moment that led to Levi's writing, nor does a second
clause arrive with which we could situate the present tense use of
the verb "to be," which instead remains unqualified and leaves the
reader suspended in an inconclusive temporality, faced with an am-
biguous challenge.
This "temporal inconclusiveness" is fundamental to Levi's project
and is echoed in the structure of the entire text. First of all, the
book does not move from beginning to end in a strictly chronologi-
MLN 759
cal way; rather, the Preface and seventeen chapters divide the story
into thematic considerations, linked anecdotes, each chapter struc-
tured as a kind of vignette crystallizing one or a group of elements
in both the dismantling of personality and its reconstitution. The
movement among certain thematically unified vignettes is one of
the techniques whereby Levi recreates the overwhelmingly bewil-
dering confusion experienced by those deported to concentration
camps, because the ignorance of the newcomers is reintroduced
with each of the opening four chapters, "The Journey," "On the
Bottom," "Initiation," and "Ka-Be." Within this already fragmentary
structure is yet another device which further undermines the simple
telling of a tale in chronoglogical order: every chapter-vignette con-
tains at least two temporalities; no chapter functions exclusively in
the past of the event or in the present of the time of writing. The
tense shifts within each chapter are almost always indications of
generic change, such as the first person singular present tense being
used as the diary-like tone of memoir; the past tense, when set
in opposition to the present, is usually used for the testimonial/
witness mode, and underlines the survival of the narrator; the pre-
sent tense is also used to express reflections made at the time of
writing which form a kind of essayistic response to the events and
details of the narration itself.
One of the effects of these temporal changes is that Levi de-
fictionalizes the text whose diary-like tone of narration captures us
precisely with the authority of its storytelling voice, but thereby risks
suggesting a false genre, i.e., fiction, for the events here recorded.
The interruption of a voice which can explain events that were
indecipherable to Levi at the time he was first deported to Ausch-
witz lets us know the simple, but crucial, detail that he survived. In
the first chapter, "I1 Viaggio," Levi narrates the train ride, using the
imperfect tense and remote past (the story-telling tenses par excel-
lence), but while doing so, he moves back and forth in time between
the unfolding of the train ride, his knowledge of what was actually
happening (a knowledge he acquired only subsequent to the train
ride itself), and the aftermath of the Holocaust (only four people
from his train car survived: "Among the forty-five people in my
wagon only four saw their homes again; and it was by far the most
fortunate wagon"7 [p.13]). Just after this temporal breach in which
Levi suspends the action of his narration in order to comment on it
from the vantage point of a time future to that moment-a future
which presupposes Levi's survival-he returns to the temporality of
760 DALYA M. SACHS
the journey itself, narrating the next line with the imperfect: "We
were suffering from thirst and cold."8
Only here, when Levi resumes the narration of events, he assumes
the first person plural as a narrative voice. Much of Se questo e un
uomo is narrated in the first person plural, and Levi uses it both to
convey that he was only one of an immense mass of victims and to
give voice to those who, unlike him, did not live to bear witness
to the experience. But this is also a "we" that extends beyond the
specific group whose experience it articulates. It is a "we" which
implicates the reader in its collectivity, one which grammatically
submerges us in, rather than distances us from, the exhausted dis-
orientation tormenting the passengers of the deportation train.
When the train arrives in Auschwitz, we already know that the narra-
tor will survive/ has survived what awaits, but by the use of the plural
"we" as the mode of narration here, we the readers are forced to
follow the same path of tense ignorance which the deportees faced.
No prescient voice, no "I" who survived, enters the narrative to
alleviate our confusion, just as no benevolent, omniscient guide
presented himself to the prisoners on the arrival platform at Ausch-
witz:
The climax came suddenly. The door opened with a crash, and the dark
echoed with outlandish orders in that curt, barbaric barking of Germans
in command which seems to give vent to a millenial anger. A vast plat-
form appeared before us, lit up by reflectors. A little beyond it, a row of
lorries. Then everything was silent again. Someone translated: we had to
climb down with our luggage and deposit it alongside the train. (p.15)9
Since one of the many elements to which Levi often attributes his
survival was his rudimentary but expanding proficiency in German,
a language he learned for research purposes during his university
years and that eventually enabled him, while in the Lager, to under-
stand much of the German he heard (bastardized German that it
was), it is significant that he chooses here to relate the events as they
appeared to him at the time. He "waits" for someone else to trans-
late the command: "Someone translated: we had to climb down with
our luggage and deposit it alongside the train." Levi does not single
himself out by using the "I" of the first person narrator here, but
places himself among the crowd with "we."
Later, after the passengers are forced to divide into groups of
women, children and older men on the one hand, and healthy men
on the other, Levi again transcribes both the ignorance of the newly
MLN 761
arrived deportees among whom he is included, and the horrific

awareness of what then occured:
What happened to the others, to the women, to the children, to the old
men, we could establish neither then nor later: the night swallowed them
up, purely and simply. Today, however, we know that in that rapid and
summary choice each one of us had been judged capable or not of
working for the Reich ... (p.15)10
The "we" of the first sentence ("we could establish neither then nor
later") shows Levi as participant and is comprehensive; but the
second "we" ("Today, however, we know that . . . ") issues from a
later date and a far more limited group-it is as though the second
"we" echoes with the absence of all those who composed the first.
This kind of double temporal horizon pervades the text and cre-
ates a pathway along which the events of the past come into contact
with the knowledge and judgment of the present. There are times
when the events of the past reach the present and disturb its safety,
as for example, when Levi interrupts his transcription of thoughts
about the chemistry exam, "And now I also know that I can save
myself if I become a Specialist, and that I will become a Specialist if I
pass a chemistry examination," to register the disparity between his
pragmatic decisions undertaken to survive the Lager, and his re-
counting in the present what now seem violent absurdities, "Today,
at this very moment as I sit writing at a table, I myself am not
convinced that these things really happened." (p. 94)"1 Not only
does this moment reinforce the fact that the man who took the
chemistry exam in Auschwitz is the same man who is "[sitting] at a
table" bearing witness, it is also a fact which the Levi who is writing
needs to reinforce with his emphatic word choices: "I myself" ("io
stesso,") and repetitions: "Today, at this very moment" ("oggi, questo
vero oggi") in order to demarcate the past from the present while
still recognizing his role and identity in both.
But beyond this "double horizon" in which past and present (the
"present" of the book's composition) are blurred into and tinged by
each other, there lies another device of temporal multiplicity which
is less noticeable at first because it is so integral to the narration and
does not originate in a post-war period: Levi vacillates between dif-
ferent periods of his internment at Auschwitz, juxtaposing discrete
time-frames in the description of single episodes and in the con-
struction of individual chapters. After describing the entry into Aus-
chwitz, in "On the Bottom," that is to say, after having been shaved,
762 DALYA M. SACHS
stripped and given prison-clothes, Levi first remarks: "each of us

remained in his own corner, and we didn't dare to lift our eyes to
look at one another."12 This observation appertains to the time of
arrival in Auschwitz; it expresses the perceptions of the Levi who
then recognizes himself for the first time as part of an unrecogniz-
able mass of quasi-men, "And here we are, transformed into the
phantoms glimpsed yesterday evening."13 But then he turns from
narrating events to proferring a commentary on them-a commen-
tary which shows an understanding of his condition and its ramifica-
tions that exceeds the boundaries of event-narration:
Then for the first time we became aware that our language lacks words to
express this offence, the demolition of a man. In a moment, with almost
prophetic intuition, the reality was revealed to us: we had reached the
bottom. It is not possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is
more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so. Nothing be-
longs to us anymore; they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even
our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will
not understand. (p. 22) 14
What Levi expresses here is not so much the condition in which he

found himself, but a reflection on that condition. And it is not insig-
nificant that it is exactly at the moment when he acknowledges the
impotence of language in the face of what Adorno called man's
"degradation into a bundle of functions,"15 in other words, at the
moment he realizes that "our language lacks words to express this
offence," that Levi makes an attempt to verbalize the characteristics
of that condition. Precisely this reaction: a forcing into language of
what seems the inexpressible horror of the Nazi attempt to "demol-
ish a man," is what distinguishes Levi from the truly "demolished"
(or, in Levi's own terminology, the "drowned" ["i sommersi"]). But
in the following sentence, Levi describes (whether it is to tell the
reader or himself) what will happen next, and discloses what will be
needed to survive, using the future tense. "They will even take away
our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have to find in ourselves
the strength to do so, to manage somehow so that behind the name
something of us, of us as we were, still remains."16 The use of the
future tense here can be explained either as a trace of Levi's later
knowledge of Auschwitz and the strategies of survival he conceived
there, or as a demonstration of his decision to observe and under-
stand, to find the strength necessary to preserve his identity.
In the following paragraph, Levi seems to open a parenthetical
series of ideas, leaving frozen in time the specific historical scene he
M L N 763
had inhabited a sentence before by introducing in the present tense

a discussion of how human identity is made up of the "value [and]
meaning ... enclosed even in the smallest of our daily habits, in the
hundred possessions which even the poorest beggar owns: a hand-
kerchief, an old letter, the photo of a cherished person."17 Because
Levi phrases these observations in the present tense, with the first
person plural and then the impersonal voice, they assume a value
not only in the specific historical context from which "even the
smallest of our daily habits" are absent, but also in the author's
present (of writing), and in our own.
These things [the hundred possessions] are part of us, almost like limbs
of our body; nor is it conceivable that we can be deprived of them in our
world, for we would immediately find others to substitute for the old
ones, other objects which are ours in their personification and evocation
of our memories. ... Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he
loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short,
of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering
and needs ... (p. 23)18
Levi draws on the potency of the present tense and the universality
of the impersonal construction, and he thereby arouses the identi-
fication of the reader. Levi brings the privation of Auschwitz to bear
on the present in a way which would not be possible if he had used a
tense consonant with the temporality of his experience there. Such
a passage would perhaps touch the sympathy of readers, but would
not necessarily show them that they, too, are bound by the same
need for "daily habits" whose absence is central to the enterprise of
annihilation. If these observations had been phrased within the
same temporality, with the narrative continuity that the "we" voice
would have conferred, they would describe only what those people
had just lost; imagine, for example, if Levi had written these pas-
sages with the inflections of the past or imperfect tense: "We were
then men who had been deprived of everyone we loved, and at the
same time, of our houses, our habits, our clothes, in short, of every-
thing we had possessed: we were hollow men, reduced to suffering
and needs ... " Such a construction would limit the force of his
words to the event they define because it would be less a reflection
on being human than a narration of recent past events and a de-
scription circumscribed by a particular moment in history. Instead,
we are forced to imagine ourselves, our own "hundred possessions,"
when we read, "These things are a part of us, almost like limbs of
our body; nor is it conceivable that we can be deprived of them in
764 DALYA M. SACHS
our world, for we would immediately find others to substitute for the
old ones, other objects which are ours in their personification and
evocation of our memories." The present conditional tense "we
would immediately find" ("subito . .. ritroveremmo") dehistoricizes
the description of what makes for the annihilation of a man, im-
ports the contours of being "on the bottom" into the reader's space,
and we conjure up the images of our own creations and possessions,
our signs of having a memory, a history and a legacy.
These kinds of temporal and voice shifts also show us one of the
most important implications of Levi's decision to begin writing'9
while in the Lager. Because he relates and thereby catalogs events as
he experienced them at the time, and then moves to other genres
and voices to offer commentary on how individuals (others as well
as himself) behaved as they did, understood or did not understand
their circumstances, we become aware of Levi's decision to become
a witness to the event through the very techniques that relate its
vicissitudes. We see how this impulse to understand his condition,
his reactions to it, and those of the others is fundamental to his
survival, since it is by understanding things which others are unable
to, that he says he survives. Hence, the impulse to understand which
distinguishes his personality generates the revelations of his under-
standing which in turn structure the book's metamorphoses from
one genre into another.
When Levi next resumes the narration of events, he goes back to a
present tense, first person singular voice (which quickly becomes a
plural, we-voice) that registers one of the first of the Nazis' excisings
of identity-the tattoo performed on the deportees: "Hdftling: I
have learnt that I am a Hdftling. My number is 174517. . . "(p. 21).20
For the first four pages, Levi's narration shows him uninitiated; the
reader watches him, or rather, follows alongside him (the narration
here is in the first person plural) as "this first long day of limbo
draws to its end."(p. 25)21 The incomprehension of these hours is
highlighted by the fact that they are recounted in the present tense.
At first, Levi explains that
the entire process of introduction to what was for us a new order took
place in a grotesque and sarcastic manner. When the tattooing operation
was finished, they shut us in a vacant hut. The bunks are made, but we are
severely forbidden to touch or sit on them: so we wander around
aimlessly for half the day in the limited space available, still tormented by
the parching thirst of the journey. (p. 240)22
MLN 765
Passages like these present a "we" who are disoriented, who know
only what "we" are not allowed, but do not know why. The present
tense here acts much like a voice-narration to a documentary film,
relating what the scenes are showing as the events transpire, except
that with our imaginations as the "projection screen," there is less
distance between the reader and the "we" of the text than there
would be if the figures of the deportees were rendered palpable by
virtue of appearing on a screen in front of a viewer, as opposed to
inside the imagination of a reader. So we inhabit the landscape and
wonder along with this "we" voice when it asks: "Will they give us
something to drink?"(p. 25)23 And we register with a corresponding
resigned disbelief that the answer is "No, they place us in line again,
they lead us to a huge square which takes up the centre of the camp
and they arrange us meticulously in squads. Then nothing hap-
pens for another hour: it seems that we are waiting for someone."
(p. 25)24
Yet after another page and a half, the remainder of this chapter is
devoted to the description of the Lager: its schedule, its geography,
its rules, its functioning. All of these details are beyond the scope of
Levi's experience at the chronological period correlate with his
arrival in Auschwitz. It would require at least a month interned in
the Lager to know that "One Sunday in every two is a regular work-
ing day; on the so-called holiday Sundays, instead of working at
Buna, one works normally on the upkeep of the Lager, so that days
of real rest are extremely rare." (p. 31)25 Many paragraphs in this
section of "On the Bottom" begin with an announcement in the first
person plural of what "we" now know, what "we" have learned about
the world of the Lager, and sometimes every sentence is inaugu-
rated with nearly identical expressions. One paragraph opens, "We
have learnt that everything is useful: the wire to tie up our shoes, the
rags to wrap around our feet, waste paper to (illegally) pad our
jacket against the cold."(p. 28)26 And the next echoes the construc-
tion of the first: "We have learnt, on the other hand, that everything
can be stolen, in fact is automatically stolen as soon as attention is
relaxed; and to avoid this, we had to learn the art of sleeping with
our head on a bundle made up of our jacket and containing all our
belongings, from the bowl to the shoes." (pp. 28-9)27 The repetition
of phrases like "we have learnt" (for example, the phrases, "we,
too, know," "we already know" and " we had soon learned" all ap-
pear on a single page)28 deliberately highlights the idea of learn-
766 DALYA M. SACHS
ing the Lager; and the comprehensiveness of the description of

understood-aspects-of-Lager-life itself shows Levi's determination to
learn what it takes to survive, because in order to be able to tran-
scribe what seems an encyclopedic summary of the Lager's particu-
lars, Levi has to have observed, survived, and classified all the orga-
nized inhumanities he summarizes.
The fusion of temporalities and movement among voices coalesce
in this chapter, and indeed, in most of the chapters of Se questo e un
uomo, to create what sounds virtually like a handbook to survival in
Auschwitz,29 a guide which shows and tells what one needs (and I
myself use the present tense, impersonal voice deliberately) to com-
prehend, or at least be aware of, if one wants to improve the chances
of preserving one's identity: "to manage somehow so that behind
the name something of us, of us as we were, still remains." In "Ka-
Be," one of chapters that is most consistent, most monological in its
tense structure, the future still intrudes, the intermediary temporal
level of Levi's voice of experience in the Lager is called upon, so to
speak, by the Levi who is still ignorant and floundering. When he is
about to enter Ka-Be he says:
someone came and took away my bowl, spoon, beret and gloves. The
others laughed. Didn't I know that I had to hide them or leave them with
someone, or best of all sell them, as they cannot be taken into Ka-Be?
(p. 42)30
This observation demands a later knowledge of events than he pos-

sessed at the time, demands experience of Ka-Be, and hence, of
course, survival of it, but what is new is that by phrasing the knowl-
edge that comes with greater experience as though it were gener-
ated by the minds of other inmates, Levi "cedes" to the perceptions
of others (much as he does in I sommersi e i salvati [The Drowned and
the Saved] by quoting from the memoirs of the Austrian-Jewish sur-
vivor Jean Amery, At the Mind's Limits, as well as from the letters of
responses by German readers of Se questo e un uomo). And in "The
Drowned and the Saved," a chapter framed on both ends by the
reflections of the present in a kind of essayistic format, Levi again
shifts outside his own experience, charting four incarnations of the
"saved" (Schepschel, Alfred L., Elias, and Henri). He becomes a
kind of omniscient narrator of these men's experience, and pre-
cisely by ceding to their stories in the telling of his own, by in-
corporating their voices into his own learning process, Levi goes
beyond the singularity of his own experience in two different tem-
MLN 767
poralities: in the past tense of Levi's Lager days he comes to under-

stand his own circumstance and create his own survival by observing
others with meticulous and analytic carefulness; in the present of
writing (itself a dubious temporality since, as we know, he began the
manuscript while in the Lager, but at least in this chapter his observ-
ing intelligence seems to issue from the post-War period) this same
stratagem offers Levi a forum in which to speculate and search for
theorems not only of survival, but of human nature in general, and
his own being in particular. Levi's scientific mind, that of a trained
chemist, served him both during and after the experience, as he
reminds us (and himself?) in the Preface with locutions reminiscent
of the scientific method: "[This book] has not been written in order
to formulate new accusations; it should be able, rather, to furnish
documentation for a quiet study of certain aspects of the human
mind. "31
And what Levi does for himself with these literary devices, he
invites his readers to experience in themselves as well, using still
another set of slight linguistic shifts, as, for example, when he writes,
"At the Market [Levi uses "Borsa," the Italian equivalent of "Stock
Exchange"], you can find specialists in kitchen thefts, their jackets
swollen with strange bulges." (p. 72)32 Turning to the second per-
son singular in the present tense can be seen, on the one hand, as a
simple address to the reader, but precisely because this is situated in
a literary work, the address takes on the force that readers expect of
and grant to omniscient narrators. That is to say, much as when we
read the confidences of, for example, a Balzacian narrator as he
outlines the hollow hierarchy and disingenuous practices of the
Parisians and provincials who populate his books, we read a line like
"At the Market you can find. . . " and almost subconsciously feel an
alliance with the narrator, as though we can stand next to him,
following him around as his privileged guests on this tour of his
subject.
My choice of analogies here is by no means arbitrary, since the
chapter from which this line is excerpted is "Al di qua del bene e del
male," Levi's guide to the "economy" of the Lager, "economy" in its
fullest sense, indeed, in its Balzacian sense: the commodification of
human activities and human desires in terms of their "value" in
Balzac's Paris becomes the marketplace of human need whose
stakes are human lives in Levi's Lager. The impulse to catalog and
thereby understand all the components of this "economy," so cen-
tral to Balzac's Comedie Humaine, is crucial to Levi's entire project
768 DALYA M. SACHS
and it informs both his survival and transcription of Auschwitz. And,

like the Balzacian narrator, Levi invites the readers to judge what he
observed and has written in the text even though it emanates from a
specific place and time in the past, as though they, too, were in
attendance in Auschwitz or as though Auschwitz and its economy
were converging on their present. As Gian-Paolo Biasin emphasizes
in his lucid study of Se questo e un uomo, "Levi, while outlining the
precise mechanisms of the economic system of the Lager, never
forgets for a moment the moral side of it."33 Later in the same
chapter, still more explicitly demanding the readers' ethical involve-
ment, Levi writes,
We would now like to invite the reader to contemplate the possible

meaning in the Lager of the words 'good,' and 'evil,' 'just,' and 'unjust';
let each one judge, on the basis of the picture we have outlined and of
the examples given above, how much of our ordinary moral world could
survive on this side of the barbed wire. (p. 78)34
Throughout the book the almost covert (because so integrated)

devices of shifting voices, temporalities and genres have created a
sense of inclusiveness: a chorus of voices seem to generate the text
from different temporal registers: no voices or times are exempt.
But here Levi turns from the text to address the reader directly, and
in so doing he reaches out beyond the double temporal horizon of a
later knowledge in Auschwitz by which we know both that he wants
to learn how to survive and that he is doing so; this direct address
reaches into a post-War temporality in which Levi has survived and
we thus become involved in the Lager world by virtue of our identi-
fication with voices of narration that originate after the War. Levi's
text moves beyond these two into yet another temporality: the non-
finite time of a reader's present, the indeterminate space of a read-
er's self-understanding and ethical judgment. Thus, Levi's work
lacks "a final tense," or rather, it refuses to have one.
II. Intellectual Resistance
"We don't choose a moral response, we

construct one."
-Michael Frayn, Constructions35
In a world of symbolism, Levi resists the paradox that says that

everything in Auschwitz is endowed with an aura of intentionality
M L N 769
despite its so-called meaninglessness. A rejection of the symbolic

should not seem so surprising in this context given the specific
qualities of the symbolism involved: the Nazis imposed-by design
and occasionally by default-a set of symbolisms contrived to dehu-
manize and subsequently "prove" the inhumanity of those they im-
prisoned and murdered, but the symbolism could only be effective
if both sides acted in accord with its meanings. Levi understood that
the symbolisms of Auschwitz-the tattoo, the roll-call, the eradica-
tion of privacy, etc.-could only function if they were not thought
about, because, in this case, to think about the symbol is to destroy
it, since thinking is human, defines human-ness. Part of Levi's learn-
ing how to survive depended precisely upon his human intellect:
the decision to become a witness to the event, which we saw in his
uses of tense and voice, meant that Levi was constantly observing
and organizing those observations, assimilating what he experi-
enced into a compendium of reflections on human-ness. In so do-
ing, he transcends the symbols which even those who strenuously
object to the Nazi dehumanization ofJews unwittingly uphold when
they critique Levi's writing (itself a survival mechanism) for the
intellectual resistance it manifests. In a recent essay published in
History and Memory, Dominick LaCapra, a history professor, writes
with astonishing presumptuousness, "it may also be useful to quote
Levi on silence, for his words are instructive despite their dubious
indebtedness to a largely unexamined tradition of high culture,
overly analytic rationality, teleological assumptions and restrictive
humanism."36 By repudiating the very qualities that enabled Levi to
assert his private identity and general humanity, LaCapra's assess-
ment not only misunderstands the profound, perhaps even radical,
openness of Levi's writing, but it would seem also to prefer the
dehumanization of the victim as a condition of his survival. (So,
whereas the Nazis depended upon the dehumanization of their
victims in order to carry out systematic murder, LaCapra'sjudgment
of the Nazis collaborates in their symbolism without questioning its
untenability). For Levi, humanism is anything but "restrictive," as is
clear if we look to the terms he uses throughout Se questo e un uomo:
even when he writes " . . . we have reached the bottom. It is not
possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is more miser-
able than this, nor could it conceivably be so" (p. 22), it is highly
significant that Levi still refers to this as a human condition, and he
can do so because to relate events and record history (i.e., commu-
nication and memory) are the foundation of any kind of human
770 DALYA M. SACHS
culture, not just, as LaCapra would have it, of "a largely unexamined
tradition of high culture."
The recklessness of reservations like LaCapra's contrasts with and
is discredited by the advantages (or perhaps the necessity) of a
sensibility of tenacious humanism like Levi's. In what Levi chooses
to narrate, he rejects the Lager as a non-human existence; he writes
about it in terms which assimilate it to human, civilized experience.
Levi's urge to understand, which the structure of the narration
presupposes and ultimately summons its readers to reproduce, is
profoundly correlate with another of the most distinct and perhaps
surprising elements of Levi's book: the ability and tendency to
choose the exceptionally good or lucky experiences in or about the
Lager as the ones to relate, as the ones to learn from, and as indict-
ment. The extraordinarily holistic view which Levi's work embodies
is not just an intermittent quality; it is present right from the open-
ing words of the Preface: "It was my good fortune to be deported to
Auschwitz only in 1944 . . . ." (p. 5)37 That the first words of a
Holocaust testimony/book should begin with the idea of the narra-
tor's "good fortune," seems oxymoronic, but instead, it is indispens-
able to an intellectual resistance not only of the Nazis and Ausch-
witz, but of any facile mythologization of victimhood. Levi subverts
the model to which so many writers of the Holocaust (whether
survivors or not) subscribe. As Michael Bernstein explains,
. . . Levi [completely] reverses customary judgments about the Camps. If

the by now conventional claim is that Auschwitz, because of its brutality
and ruthlessness, represents a uniquely authoritative testing-place of hu-
man beings, Levi actually implies that its exceptional nature makes the
Lager an unreliable "laboratory."38
By choosing the exceptionally "good" day, experience, or point of

view, Levi brings the extra-ordinary world of the Lager into a lan-
guage of the ordinary. Learning the name of their destination is
"Auschwitz" is shown to us as a moment of relief for the passengers
of the deportation train because, while it held no significance for
them, the fact that they knew a name was a comfort because a name
"at least implied some place on this earth." (p. 13)39
Many of the episodes Levi relates are "ordinary," small moments
(there are strikingly few descriptions of his own pain, an absence
which is all the more meaningful when we consider Levi's work in
comparison not only to the "typical" Holocaust survivor's literature,
but to that of an intellectual "equal" like Amery, whose book is
MLN 771
predicated upon and returns constantly to address the torture he

underwent as a political prisoner of the Nazis.) Levi's style of narra-
tion is prosaic, not elegiac, and the metaphoric language and struc-
ture he applies to the Lager (the "economy" of the Lager), all make
the Lager recognizable, show the human responses and ways of behav-
ing and surviving in the Lager. For example, in the midst of the
bureaucratic horror of "Ka-Be," Levi succeeds "miraculously [in tak-
ing off] my shoes and rags without losing any of them, without
letting my bowl and gloves be stolen, without losing my balance,"
(p. 41)40 and later in "The Work," he records with surprise that his
initiative to team up with one of the stronger, taller men (Resnyk)
for the "unloading of cast-iron cylinders . . . sleepers" (supports,
affixed in the ground, that keep railroad rails in place) not only
succeeds, but works out better than he had hoped:
I will try and place myself with Resnyk; he seems a good worker and being
taller will support the greater part of the weight. I know that it is the
natural order of events that Resnyk refuse me with disdain and form a
pair with another more robust individual . .. Instead Resnyk accepts, and
even more, lifts up the sleeper by himself and rests it on my right shoul-
der with care ... (p. 60)41
The following chapter title itself epitomizes the tendency to inte-

grate the exceptional into a language of normal experience: "A
Good Day." This is another seemingly oxymoronic phrase, but Levi
points out that because the sun came out a bit stronger, and there
was extra food, the benefit was that "For a few hours we can be
unhappy in the manner of free men." (p. 69)42 Levi thus defines as
good whatever reaffirms his human-ness, and singularity is what he
must focus on since it is the scarcest of commodities in the "econ-
omy" of the Lager. Levi even articulates this philosophy explicitly
towards the end of the book:
It is lucky that it is not windy today. Strange, how in some way one always
has the impression of being fortunate, how some chance happening,
perhaps infinitesimal, stops us crossing the threshold of despair and
allows us to live. It is raining, but it is not windy. (p. 119)43
This ability to recognize the element of luck ("It is lucky" or "e

fortuna") inherent in the singularity of a "good" episode, to be able
to maintain the conviction, in Auschwitz and after it, that "no
human experience is without meaning or unworthy of analysis"
(p. 79),44 finds its corollary in Levi's understanding that neither
victimhood nor survival can be reduced to a formula. Both are the
772 DALYA M. SACHS
result of a convergence of fortuitous circumstances whose causes

are less important than our scrupulous attention to understanding
how the fact of the circumstances modifies both our perception of
human society and the construction of our own moral response
to it.
For Levi, the construction of a moral response began simultane-
ously with the period of his Lager internment: by writing while in
Auschwitz, that is to say, by turning the attempted destruction of his
identity into a literary work informed by the need to understand,
Levi uses art to reinstall order, to reconstruct human-ness. But in
this process, Levi brings his own world, his canon and history, to
bear on the experience of Auschwitz precisely in order to under-
stand Auschwitz not as excluded from, but in terms of, the world.
When Levi explains the Lager by analogy with certain cultural or
literary/artistic models, (such as the Bible, Dante, Machiavelli,
Manzoni), he not only reinforces his own identity, he situates the
Lager in the ambiguous temporality denoted by the title, Se questo e
un uomo, and forces it into a kind of dialogue with the works that he
cites and the ethical dramas which unfold there.
After using the "we" voice for the temporality of the Lager
throughout most of the book, Levi reverts to a narrative voice in the
first person singular in the chapter, "The Canto of Ulysses," and by
the sheer force of the pronoun, establishes the epiphany of identity
which this episode records. Calling on the same verbal expression
he used in "On the Bottom" to describe the revelation of a collec-
tive offense for which "our language lacks words" (p. 22), Levi re-
lates the thoughts racing through his mind as he tries to recreate a
human bond both with his past, and with his Lager companion
(Pikolo), through the recitation of Dante's poetry. The "demolition
of a man" described in "On the Bottom," stands out for the par-
ticularity of its temporal emphasis: "In a moment, with almost pro-
phetic intuition, the reality was revealed to us." (p. 22) That dis-
mantling of human-ness is reassembled in an equally "prophetic"
moment after Levi attempts to explain the lines of The Divine Comedy
devoted to Odysseus's story of his own death:
I keep Pikolo back, it is vitally necessary and urgent that he listen, that he
understand this "as pleased Another" before it is too late; tomorrow he or
I might be dead, or we might never see each other again, I must tell him,
I must explain to him about the Middle Ages, about the so human and so
necessary and yet unexpected anachronism, but still more, something
gigantic that I myself have only just seen, in a flash of understand-
MLN T 773
ing, perhaps the reason for our fate, for our being here today....
(pp. 104-105)45
It is not only that poetry is a human expression involving recurrent
patterns and structures which compels Levi's overwhelming, mo-
mentary recognition and recovery of order amidst the chaos of
Auschwitz; nor is it just that this is the poetry of an Italian (i.e., a
compatriot of Levi, a reminder of his background), or that the
passage he is trying to recite here is from Inferno-the Cantica whose
title seems to have come to life in the creation of Auschwitz. The
very lines he tries to recall and reproduce are those of Odysseus
narrating his own destruction, narrating on behalf of his compan-
ions who have no voice, bearing witness to his own impulse to under-
stand the limits of human endeavor-all in the perfect terza rima
that Dante's attentive genius provides. Thus, Levi's attempt to nar-
rate the composition of a man in art-a character who, in that
literary work, and with his pagan world-view, was narrating his de-
molition at the hands of the gods-is the inverse of the dehuman-
ization and decimation of men in real life which Levi has been
rendering in organized structures through the art of his writing.
Odysseus drowns from wanting to understand something beyond
human boundaries, (he is literally "drowned"/ "sommerso" when he
dies in Dante's poem: "Infin che '1 mar fu sopra noi rinchiuso"46)
and he needs Dante's attention to give his testimony a formal exis-
tence. Levi, struggling to understand and survive a condition at the
very limits of humanness, draws on the solidity of literary represen-
tation both to re-establish a continuity with the past and to formal-
ize his role as fulcrum between the present and the future, as narra-
tor of "this exceptional human state" of which "[it would be good]
to retain some memory." (my translation)47 The urge to explain to
another human consciousness the relationship between the literary
demolition of a man which is simultaneously an artistic, formal
reconstruction, and the reality of the Lager, is also what informs
Levi's effort to narrate Se questo e un uomo-an effort marked by the
complexity of representing a past whose upheavals continue to vio-
late the present.
III. Conclusion
"This book means to contribute to the

clarification of some aspects of the Lager
phenomenon which still appear obscure. It
774 DALYA M. SACHS
also sets itself a more ambitious goal, to try

to answer the most urgent question, the
question which torments all those who have
happened to read our accounts: How much
of the concentration camp world is dead
and will not return, like slavery and the
dueling code? How much is back or is
coming back? What can each of us do so
that in this world pregnant with threats at
least this threat will be nullified?"
-Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

(1986)48
If we remember one of Levi's earliest realizations about the Lager,

that "our language lacks words to express this offence," and that
words like "hunger" and "cold" do not begin to approximate in
meaning what the prisoners of the Lager experienced, then the
supposition that there is an absence of "hatred, malice, and a yearn-
ing for vengeance," can be answered with the explanation that these
words, and the feelings they represent, are not adequate expres-
sions or responses to the Lager, either. To have served as witness to
Auschwitz and provided testimony with Se questo e un uomo, in whose
tone one does not find "expressions of hatred for the Germans, no
malice, no yearning for vengeance," brings to the present the very
inadequacy of language in the face of the reality Levi survived. For
Levi, the comprehensiveness of his response to the Lager in Se questo
e un uomo is still not sufficient; the problems and questions opened
by that text risk-precisely because the text itself is finite-being
inadequate responses as well. Because Levi has no finite language
with which to erect a permanent crystallization of all that the Holo-
caust was and means, he has to reframe and rephrase the questions
and problems of Se questo e un uomo in light of time's passage to
clarify ("the clarification of some aspects") what time has distorted
or made dim.
For the same reasons that Se questo e un uomo elicits a self-questioning

among readers and listeners, it summons Levi back to re-evaluate
his own observations, to respond to his earlier response in the form
of his 1987 book, I sommersi e i salvati. The form of this text is
perhaps still more uncategorizable than its predecessor; in its con-
tinuous re-evaluations it uses much more commentary, and refers to
many more cultural and artistic citations, as much from the distant
MLN 775
as from the recent past (for example, John Donne and Italo Svevo),
as much from high culture as from popular art forms (for example,
Dante and Antonioni's Deserto Rosso). Levi re-narrates what was al-
ready rendered in Se questo e un uomo (like the finding of the water-
pipe whose contents he shared with Alberto: only now Levi includes
the detail that there was a witness to the episode, one who still
inspires remorse in Levi because he did not share the trickle of
water with him, too). Here again, Levi yields deliberately to the
involvement of others so that their voices and judgments make up
part of his text and engage his need to scrutinize the reactions of
others in order to understand his own. Levi incorporates the re-
sponses of other writers and readers to the event and its legacy (he
creates a dialogue with Am6ry's response to the Holocaust in At the
Mind's Limits, and he includes the dialogues opened by the German
readers when they wrote to him after reading his first book). Thus, it
is not just the historical event which is written, but its historical
ramifications, its effect on people's consciousnesses, the develop-
ments from and responses to the event and its literary, philosophical
representations.
At the time of the events, there was a need to write as a survival
mechanism and later as a type of rehabilitation because of all the
ameliorative functions of writing (the usefulness of observing and
ordering the experience, positing a stable identity, and enabling
judgment through multiple temporalities and voices). There was
also a need to perpetuate the analyses of the past in the re-analyses
which the present affords: because time has passed, Levi's re-analyses
implicate memory and thematize it: memory becomes another me-
diating factor which Levi must address (and implicitly he asks his
readers to address it as well). In the first chapter of I sommersi e i
salvati, "The Memory of the Offense," Levi writes that
An apology is in order. This very book is drenched in memory; what's

more, a distant memory. Thus it draws from a suspect source and must be
protected against itself. So here then: it contains more considerations
than memories, lingers more willingly on the state of affairs such as it
is now than on the retroactive chronicle. (The Drowned and the Saved,
p. 35)49
The element of memory in the project of reformulating events and

judging their implications on both the past and present transforms
the text from being a narrative of "old" events ("a retroactive chron-
icle"), into new, fuller understandings of the remembered event.
776 DALYA M. SACHS
And precisely because time has passed, memory intercedes and

adds to the refiguring of the event by incorporating the "fate" of the
event; by asking, "how has history treated the Lager?" the Lager is
reinscribed in the present, in "the state of affairs such as it is now."
In 1976 Levi explained that in writing Se questo e' un uomo he
wanted to "prepare the ground for the judges. The judges are all of
you."50 But the act of writing I sommersi e i salvati also seems to be
Levi's answer to his own unresolved questions about Se questo e un
uomo, his attempt to judge his own moral constructions and self-
understanding. He seems to be asking himself: Why is it important,
and is it necessary, is it accurate, for my literary choices to be as they
are in Se questo e un uomo?
Like Montaigne in his constantly re-written, re-thought and re-
vised Essais, Levi wants first and foremost to probe his own con-
sciousness in order to be able to define and perhaps understand
human-ness. To test that human-ness against one's own personality
and existence is to maintain an appreciation for the limitations of
any single expression of judgment or understanding because one's
self exists in the mutable contours of time and space, is ramified by
each, and thus can serve as the closest model for an evaluation
of "external" historical events. In "Of Experience," Montaigne ex-
plains,
I would rather be an authority on myself than on Cicero. In the experi-
ence I have of myself I find enough to make me wise, if I were a good
scholar. He who calls back to mind the excesses of his past anger, and
how far this fever carried him away, sees the ugliness of this passion
better than in Aristotle, and conceives a more justified hatred for it. He
who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threat-
ened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to
another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recog-
nizing his condition.51
It is in themselves that both Montaigne and Levi make their judg-

ments, not only of events, but of the meaning of those events. Much
as Montaigne explores his inner contradictions by incorporating the
texts with which he feels himself in dialogue and by citing the events
and anecdotes of distant and recent history, Levi does not resolve
the contradictions and ambiguities raised by the Holocaust and the
memory and representation of it (his own memory/representation
as well as those of others); he recognizes and internalizes them, and
thereby resists the "oversimplifications" of final responses against
which he cautions us. (The Drowned and the Saved, p. 20).
MLN 777
The analogy which Levi formulates to explain his ambivalence

about memory is the example on which I will close my own analyses,
because the analogy embodies what I think are some of the most
central facets of Levi's exceptional humanism, and at the same time
it explains in a particularly vivid way why Levi's writing does not
exhibit the "anger" whose absence has puzzled so many readers. In
what amounts to a disclaimer which echoes Levi's 1947 statement
that Se questo e un uomo contained certain "structural defects," Levi
throws into question the structure he uses to generate I sommersi e i
salvati, and then offers a psychological explanation of his motive by
citing its inverse in Dante:
It has been noticed . . . that many survivors of wars or other complex and
traumatic experiences tend unconsciously to filter their memory: sum-
moning them up among themselves or telling them to third persons, they
prefer to dwell on moments of respite, on grotesque, strange, or relaxed
intermezzos, and to skim over the most painful episodes, which are not
called up willingly from the reservoir of memory and therefore with time
tend to mist over, to lose their contours. The behavior of Count Ugolino
is psychologically credible when he becomes reticent about telling Dante
of his terrible death; he agrees to do so not out of aquiescence but only
out of a feeling of posthumous revenge against his eternal enemy. When
we say, "I will never forget that," referring to some event which has
profoundly wounded us but has not left in us or around us a material
trace or a permanent void, we are foolhardy: in "civilian" life we gladly
forget the details of a serious illness from which we have recovered, or
those of a successful surgical operation. (pp. 32-33)52
In Inferno, Ugolino only agrees to speak to Dante at the thought that

his story will harm his enemy, the Archbishop Ruggieri: "But if my
words are to be seed that may bear fruit of infamy to the traitor
whom I gnaw, you shall see me speak and weep together."53 Levi's
choosing as analogous to his own basis for narration Ugolino's nar-
ration of his death-a narration whose motive could well be defined
as one of "hatred, malice and a yearning for revenge"-shows the
fruitlessness of an angry testimony. Ugolino's words are wholly im-
potent: he is in the frozen, eternally immutable pit of Inferno; there
can be no vendetta, but only a perpetual violence of anger. Dos-
toyevsky, who understood this kind of sensibility so well, asserts that
"Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such
grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hope-
lessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to
reopen the wound."54 Instead of either keeping a wound constantly
778 DALYA M. SACHS
open and festering (this is exactly what Levi takes exception to in

Amery's work), or ignoring the wound "of a serious illness from
which we have recovered, or those of a successful surgical opera-
tion," Levi's absence of "expressions of hatred, malice, and a yearn-
ing for revenge" gives his writing a resonance in the present. And
that resonance is not limited to future reflections on the Holocaust,
but extends to any survivors "of wars or other complex and trau-
matic experiences."
Yet even though Levi rejects the motive for Ugolino's narration,
he both understands it ("[it] is psychologically credible") and finds
it somehow similar enough to his own impulses to warrant including
it here. And this choice is emblematic of Levi's ability to understand
(or at least try to understand) the larger picture in which he is a
component. Levi never offers only positive models, or models just
like himself: he writes of "the drowned" as well as "the saved"; of the
immorality of certain victims of the Holocaust as well as the "admi-
rable" features of their oppressors (Note Levi's uncanny ability to
see both sides of a situation, as, for example, when he describes the
innate national characteristics of his former persecutors: "In the
Lagers oppression was of extreme proportions and enforced with
the renowned and in other fields praiseworthy German efficiency"
[The Drowned and the Saved, p. 160]).55 Ugolino, a "peccatore" ("sin-
ner") in Dante's terminology (but not a "drowned one" ["som-
merso"] in Levi's) -that is to say, one who committed the crime, not
the victim of it, is conceived of by Levi as having the same psycho-
logical reaction to memory as the victims (of the Holocaust in par-
ticular, but of any victim, as Levi's language makes clear).
Levi's writing, and its absence of "hatred, malice, and a yearning
for vengeance," attests to his construction of a rigorous morality of
an entirely secular, humanistic standard. No divinity or the transcen-
dent certainties of the answers it could provide have any part in
Levi's world of personal responsibility: "One cannot say that each
turn follows from a single why: simplifications are proper only for
textbooks; the whys can be many, entangled with one another or
unknowable, if not actually nonexistent. No historian or epistemolo-
gist has yet proven that history is a deterministic process." (The
Drowned and the Saved, p. 150)56 And like Walter Benjamin, whose
understanding of history and storytelling Levi's thinking mirrors
here, Levi realized, and his writing shows, that the story of the Lager
needs to be retold and embellished by other voices and in other
times in order to remain a vital part of the cultural imagination
MLN 779
from which it stems. Because, otherwise, as Benjamin cautions, "ev-

ery image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of
its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably."57
University of California, Berkeley
NOTES
1 Primo Levi, "Appendix to the annotated edition of "Se questo e un uomo," my

translation. The original Italian, "Nel Suo libro non si trovano espressioni di
odio nei confronti dei tedeschi, ne rancore, ne desiderio di vendetta. Li ha
perdonati?" can be found in "Appendice per l'edizione scolastica di Se questo e
un uomo," printed in Primo Levi, Opere, Volume Primo (Torino: Einaudi, 1987)
p. 186. All references to Levi's works in the original Italian will be cited in the
notes, following the bibliographic information on the English edition of the
text. The Italian will appear in the notes, and page numbers refer to this
edition.
2 " . . come mia indole personale, non sono facile all'odio. Lo ritengo un senti-
mento animalesco e rozzo, e preferisco che invece le mie azioni e i miei pen-
sieri, nel limite del possibile, nascano dalla ragione; per questo motivo, non ho
mai coltivato entro me stesso l'odio come desiderio primitivo di rivalsa, di
sofferenza inflitta al mio nemico vero o presunto, di vendetta privata." (Levi,
Opere, p. 186)
3 "... nello scrivere questo libro, ho assunto deliberatamente il linguaggio
pacato e sobrio del testimone, non quello lamentevole della vittima ne quello
irato del vendicatore: pensavo che la mia parola sarebbe stata tanto piu cre-
dibile ed utile quanto piu apparisse obiettiva e quanto meno suonasse appas-
sionata; solo cosi il testimone in giudizio adempie alla sua funzione, che e
quella di preparare il terreno al giudice. I giudici siete voi." (Opere, p. 187)
4 Lynn M. Gunzberg, "Nuotando altrimenti che nel Serchio: Dante as vademe-
cum for Primo Levi," in Reason and Light: Essays on Primo Levi, ed. Susan Tarrow
(Western Societies Program, Occasional Paper No.25, Center for International
Studies, Cornell University, 1990), p. 82.
5 Primo Levi, "Author's Preface" to Survival in Auschwitz, trans. Giulio Einaudi
editore (NY: Macmillan, 1961), pp. 5-6. All citations in English refer to this
edition, unless otherwise noted, and will hereafter be included in the body of
the essay. "Mi rendo conto e chiedo venia dei difetti strutturali del libro. Se non
di fatto, come intenzione e come concezione esso e nato fin dai giorni di Lager.
. . . il libro e stato scritto per soddisfazione ... in primo luogo ... a scopo di
liberazione interiore. Di qui il suo carattere frammentario: i capitoli sono stati
scritti non in successione logica ma per ordine di urgenza." (Levi, Opere,
pp. 3-4.)
6 Levi writes, "The need to tell 'the rest,' to make 'the rest' participate in it [the
days in the Lager], had taken on for us, before our liberation and after, the
character of an immediate and violent impulse, to the point of competing with
our elementary needs." (Levi, pp. 5-6) The Italian text reads: "II bisogno di
raccontare agli "altri," di fare gli "altri" partecipi, aveva assunto fra noi, prima
della liberazione e dopo, il carattere di un impulso immediato e violento, tanto
da rivaleggiare con gli altri bisogni elementari." (Opere, p. 4).
7 "Fra le quarantacinque persone del mio vagone, quattro soltanto hanno rivisto
le loro case; e fu di gran lunga il vagone piu fortunato." (Opere, p. 10).
780 DALYA M. SACHS
8 I have provided the translation here because the translation in the Macmillan
edition, "We suffered from thirst and cold," does not convey the force of the
imperfect tense of the Italian: "Soffrivamo per la sete e il freddo." (Opere, p. 10).
9 "Venne a un tratto lo scioglimento. La portiera fu aperta con fragore, il buio
echeggi6 di ordini stranieri, e di quei barbarici latrati dei tedeschi quando
comandano, che sembrano dar vento a una rabbia vecchia di secoli. Ci apparve
una vasta banchina illuminata da riflettori. Poco oltre, una fila di autocarri. Poi
tutto tacque di nuovo. Qualcuno tradusse: bisognava scendere coi bagagli, e
depositare questi lungo il treno." (Opere, p. 12)
10 "Quello che accadde degli altri, delle donne, dei bambini, dei vecchi, noi non
potemmo stabilire allora ne dopo: la notte li inghiotti, puramente e semplice-
mente. Oggi per6 sappiamo che in quella scelta rapida e sommaria, di ognuno
di noi era stato giudicato se potesse o no lavorare utilmente per il Reich ..."
(Opere, pp. 12-13)
11 "Ed ora so anche che mi salver6 se diventer6 Specialista, e diventer6 Specialista
se superer6 un esame di chimica. Oggi, questo vero oggi in cui sto seduto a un
tavolo e scrivo, io stesso non sono convinto che queste cose sono realmente
accadute." (Opere, p. 106)
12 Here again I have not used the Macmillan edition's translation because it mis-
translates the tense Levi chose, using the present instead of the past, for "cia-
scuno e rimasto nel suo angolo, e non abbiamo osato levare gli occhi l'uno
sull'altro." (Opere, p. 20).
13 I have added the phrase "And here we are," to the English translation, which
begins simply "we are transformed . . . " in order not to give the text a conclu-
sive temporality. In Italian, the sentence is actually a fragment, there is no verb,
only a past participle ("transformed"): "Eccoci trasformati nei fantasmi intra-
visti ieri sera." (Opere, p. 20).
14 "Allora per la prima volta ci siamo accorti che la nostra lingua manca di parole
per esprimere questa offesa, la demolizione di un uomo. In un attimo, con
intuizione quasi profetica, la realta ci si e rivelata: siamo arrivati sul fondo. Pifi
giu di cosi non si pu6 andare: condizione umana pif misera non c'e, e non e
pensabile. Nulla pifi e nostro: ci hanno tolto gli abiti, le scarpe, anche i capelli;
se parleremo, non ci ascolteranno, e se ci ascoltassero, non ci capirebbero."
(Opere, p. 20).
15 Theodor Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity, trans. Knut Tarnowski and Frederic
Will (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1973) p. 68.
16 "Ci toglieranno anche il nome: e se vorremo conservarlo, dovremo trovare in
noi la forza di farlo, di fare si che dietro al nome, qualcosa ancora di noi, di noi
quali eravamo, rimanga." (Opere, p. 20).
17 ".. . valore [e] significato ... racchiuso anche nelle piu piccole nostre abitu-
dini quotidiane." (Opere, p. 20)
18 I have modified the English translation, substituting "we would immediately
find" for what appears in the Macmillan edition as "we find," in order to be
faithful to Levi's tense structure (he uses the present conditional tense:
"ritroveremmo): "Queste cose [i cento oggetti nostri] sono parte di noi, quasi
come membra del nostro corpo; ne e pensabile di venirne privati, nel nostro
mondo, che subito ritroveremmo altri a sostituire i vecchi, altri oggetti che sono
nostri in quanto custodi e suscitatori di memorie nostre.... Si immagini ora un
uomo a cui, insieme con le persone amate, vengano tolti la sua casa, le sue
abitudini, i suoi abiti, tutti infine, letteralmente tutto quanto possiede: sara un
uomo vuoto, ridotto a sofferenza e bisogno ... " (Opere, p. 20)
MLN 781
19 In the chapter, "Die drei Leute vom Labor," Levi indicates that he was already
writing what became the text of Se questo e un uomo during his captivity in
Auschwitz:
"... non appena, al mattino, io mi sottraggo alla rabbia del vento e varco la soglia del
laboratoria, ecco al mio fianco la compagna di tutti i miei momenti di tregua, del Ka-Be e
delle domeniche di riposo: la pena del ricordarsi, il vecchio feroce struggimento di sen-
tirsi uomo, che mi assalta come un cane all'istante in cui la coscienza esce dal buoio.
Allora prendo la matita e il quaderno, e scrivo quello che non saprei dire a nessuno."
(p. 146)
". .. in the morning, I hardly escape the raging wind and cross the doorstep of the
laboratory when I find at my side the comrade of all my peaceful moments, of Ka-Be, of
the rest-Sundays-the pain of remembering, the old ferocious longing to feel myself a
man, which attacks me like a dog the moment my conscience comes out of the gloom.
Then I take my pencil and notebook and write what I would never dare tell anyone."
(p. 128).
20 "Hdftling: ho imparato che io sono uno Hdftling. I1 mio nome e 174 517."(Opere,
p. 21).
21 "questa prima lunghissima giornata di antinferno volge al termine." (Opere,
p. 23).
22 "l'intero processo d'inserimento in questo ordine per noi nuovi awiene in
chiave grottesca e sarcastica. Finita l'operazione del tatuaggio, ci hanno chiusi
in una baracca dove non c'e nessuno. Le cuccette sono rifatte, ma ci hanno
severamente proibito di toccarle e di sedervi sopra: cosi ci aggiriamo senza
scopo per meta della giornata nel breve spazio disponibile, ancora tormentati
dalla sete furiosa del viaggio." (Opere, p. 22).
23 "Ci daranno da bere?" (Opere, p. 23).
24 "No, ci mettono ancora una volta in fila, ci conducono in un vasto piazzale che
occupa il centro del campo, e ci dispongono meticolosamente inquadrati. Poi
non accade piu nulla per un'altra ora: sembra che si aspetti qualcuno." (Opere,
p. 23).
25 "Una domenica ogni due e regolare giorno lavorativo; nelle domeniche co-
sidette festive, invece di lavorare in Buna si lavora di solito alla manutenzione
del Lager, in modo che i giorni di effettivo riposo sono estremamente rari."
(Opere, p. 30).
26 "Abbiamo imparato che tutto serve; il fil di ferro, per legarsi le scarpe; gli
stracci, per ricavarne pezze da piedi; la carta, per imbottirsi (abusivamente) la
giacca contro il freddo." (Opere, p. 27).
27 "Abbiamo imparato che d'altronde tutto pu6 venire rubato, anzi, viene auto-
maticamente rubato non appena l'attenzione si rilassa; e per evitarlo abbiamo
dovuto apprendere l'arte di dormire col capo su un fagotto fatto con la giacca, e
contenente tutto il nostro avere, dalla gamella alle scarpe." (Opere, p. 27).
28 "abbiamo appreso," "anche noi adesso sappiamo," and "conosciamo gia" (Opere,
p. 27).
29 And this would perhaps be the only way that the English translation's title,
Survival in Auschwitz, could be justified. But the earnestness of the mis-titling,
rather than illuminating this element which is so central to Levi's entire project:
i.e., learning to survive and transcribing the exigencies of that survival, reveals
instead the serious misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Levi's text on
the part of the American publisher (catering, no doubt, to an American mar-
ketplace in which the catch-phrases of horror are the best marketing tools to
boost sales).
782 DALYA M. SACHS
30 mi [hanno] portato via gamella cucchiaio berretto e guanti. Gli altri hanno riso,
non sapevo che dovevo nascondergli o affidarli a qualcuno, o meglio di tutto
venderli, e che in Ka-Be non si possono portare? (Opere, p. 43).
31 "Esso non e stato scritto allo scopo di formulare nuovi capi d'accusa; potra
piuttosto fornire documenti per uno studio pacato di alcuni aspetti dell'animo
umano." (Opere, p. 3).
32 "Puoi trovare in Borsa gli specializzati in furti alla cucina, con le giacche solle-
vate da misteriosi rigonfi." (Opere, p. 80).
33 Gian-Paolo Biasin, The Flavors of Modernity (New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1993), p. 140. For a fine discussion of the representation of hunger as
both a physical and a moral/intellectual category, see Biasin's chapter "Our
Daily Bread," on pp. 128-142 of The Flavors of Modernity.
34 "Vorremmo ora invitare il lettore a riflettere, che cosa potessero significare in
Lager le nostre parole 'bene' e 'male,' 'giusto' e 'ingiusto;' giudichi ognuno, in
base al quadro che abbiamo delineato e agli esempi sopra esposti, quanto del
nostro comune mondo morale potesse sussistere al di qua del filo spinato."
(Opere, p. 87).
35 Michael Frayn, Constructions (London: Wildwood House, 1974), Number 205,
no pagination.
36 Dominick LaCapra, "The Personal, the Political and the Textual: Paul de Man as
Object of Transference," in History & Memory, Vol. 4, No.1, Spring/Summer,
1992, p. 15.
37 "Per mia fortuna, sono stato deportato ad Auschwitz solo nel 1944 ..." (Opere,
p. 3).
38 Michael A. Bernstein, Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalyptic History (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1994, p. 90).
39 "doveva pur corrispondere a un luogo di questa terra." (Opere, p. 10).
40 ". . . miracolosamente a togliermi le scarpe e gli stracci senza perdere gli uni ne
le altre, senza farmi rubare la gamella n6 i guanti, e sensa perdere l'equilibrio,"
(Opere, p. 42).
41 "Prover6 a mettermi in coppia con Resnyk, che pare un buon lavoratore, e
inoltre, essendo di alta statura, verra a sopportare la maggior part del peso. So
che e nell'ordine che Resnyk mi rifiuti con disprezzo, e si metta in coppia con
un altro individuo piui robusto ... Invece no: Resnyk accetta, non solo, ma
solleva da solo la traversina a me e l'appoggia sulla spalla destra con precau-
zione ... " (Opere, p. 65).
42 "Per qualche ora possiamo essere infelici alla maniera degli uomini liberi."
(Opere, p. 76).
43 "E fortuna che oggi non tira vento. Strano, in qualche modo si ha sempre
l'impressione di essere fortunati, che una qualche circostanza, magari infinite-
sima, ci trattenga sull'orlo della disperazione e ci conceda di vivere. Piove ma
non tira vento." (Opere, p. 135).
44 "nessuna umana esperienza e vuota di valori," (Opere, p. 88).
45 "Trattengo Pikolo, e assolutamente necesario e urgente che ascolti, che com-
prenda questo 'come altrui piacque,' prima che sia troppo tardi, domani lui o io
possiamo essere morti, o non vederci mai piui, devo dirgli, spiegargli del Me-
dioevo, del cosi umano e necessario e pure inaspettato anacronismo, e altro
ancora, qualcosa di gigantesco che io stesso ho visto ora soltanto, nell'intuizione
di un attimo, forse il perche del nostro destino, del nostro essere oggi qui ...."
(Opere p. 118).
M L N 783
46 Anna Chodakiewicz, a colleague who was an early and perceptive reader of this
essay, pointed out to me the subtle detail that Odysseus's death can be seen as a
result not only of his relentless adventurism, but also of the god's (Poseidon's)
betrayal of him, and this abandonment perhaps parallels Levi's sense of a bro-
ken contract among humans, as though the "chosen people," having been
induced to cross the Red Sea, were submerged under it by a retraction of the
divine miracle.
47 "questa eccezionale condizione umana [di cui sia bene che] rimanga qualche
memoria." (Opere, p. 88).
48 Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (NY: Vintage
Books, 1989) pp. 20-21. Future references to this work will be cited in the body
of the essay. The Italian reads: "Questo libro intende contribuire a chiarire
alcuni aspetti del fenomeno Lager che ancora appaiono oscuri. Si propone
anche un fine piui ambizioso; vorrebbe rispondere alla domanda piu urgente,
alla domanda che angoscia tutti coloro che hanno avuto occasione di leggere i
nostri racconti: quanto del mondo concentrazionario e morto e non rintorner?a
piu, come la schiavitui ed il codice dei duelli? quanto e tornato o sta tornando?
che cosa pu6 fare ognuno di noi, perche in questo mondo gravido di minacce,
almeno questa minaccia venga vanificata?" (Opere, p. 661).
49 "Un apologia e d'obbligo. Questo stesso libro e intriso di memoria: per di piui, di
una memoria lontana. Attinge dunque ad una fonte sospetta, e deve essere
difeso contro se stesso. Ecco: contiene piui considerazioni che ricordi, si sof-
ferma piu volontieri sullo stato delle cose qual e oggi che non sulla cronaca
retroattiva." (Opere, p. 673).
50 My translation from the "Appendice," in Opere, p. 187.
51 Michel de Montaigne, "De L'experience," trans. Donald M. Frame as "Of Expe-
rience," in The Complete Essays of Montaigne (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1957),
p. 822. The original French reads: "J'aymerois mieux m'entendre bien en moy
qu'en Ciceron. De l'experience quej'ay de moy,je trouve assez de quoy me faire
sage, si j'estoy bon escholier. Qui remet en sa memoire l'excez de sa cholere
passee, et jusques ou cette fievre l'emporta, voit la laideur de cette passion
mieux que dans Aristote, et en concoit une haine plus juste. Qui se souvient des
maux qu'il a couru, de ce qui l'ont menasse, des legeres occasions qui l'ont
remue d'un estat a autre, se prepare par la aux mutations futures et a la recog-
noissance de sa condition" (Essais [Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1979] 111:13,
p. 284.
52 "E stato notato . . . che molti reduci da guerre o altre esperienze complesse e
traumatiche tendono a filtrare inconsapevolmente i loro ricordi: rievocandoli
fra loro, o raccontandoli a terzi, preferiscono soffermarsi sulle tregue, sui mo-
menti di respiro, sugli intermezzi grotteschi o strani o distesi, e sorvolare sugli
episodi piu dolorosi. Questi ultimi non vengono richiamati volontieri dal ser-
batoio della memoria, e perci6 tendono ad annebbiarsi col tempo, a perdere i
loro contorni. E psicologicamente credibile il comportamento del Conte Ugo-
lino, che prova ritegno nel raccontare a Dante la sua morte tremenda, e si
induce a farlo non per accondiscendenza, ma solo per vendetta postuma contro
il suo eterno nemico. Quando diciamo "non lo dimenticher6 mai piu" riferen-
doci a qualche evento che ci ha feriti profondamente, ma che non ha lasciato in
noi o intorno a noi une traccia materiale o un'assenza permanente, siamo
awentati: anche nella vita "civile," dimentichiamo volontieri i particolari di una
malattia grave da cui siamo guariti, o di un'operazione chirurgica riuscita
bene." (Opere, p. 671).
53 Dante, Inferno, Canto XXXIII:7-9: "Ma se le mie parole esser dien seme/ che
784 DALYA M. SACHS
frutti infamia al traditor ch'i' rodo,/ parlare e lagrimar vedrai insieme." The
English translation is Charles Singleton's from Inferno (New Jersey: Princeton
UP, 1970), p. 349.
54 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov ed. R. E. Matlaw, trans. Constance
Garnett and R. E. Matlaw (NY: Norton, 1976), p. 40.
55 "L'oppressione nei Lager era di misura estrema, ed era condotta con la nota, ed
in altri campi encomiabile, efficienza tedesca." (Opere, p. 784).
56 "Non e detto che ogni svolta segue da un solo perche: le semplificazioni sono
buone solo per i testi scolastici, i perche possono essere molti, confusi fra loro, o
inconoscibili, se non addirittura inesistenti. Nessuno storico o epistemologo ha
ancora dimostrato che la storia umana sia un processo deterministico." (Opere,
p. 775).
57 Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," in Illuminations, ed.
Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1969), p. 255.

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The Language of Judgment: Primo Levi's "Se questo un uomo"

Author(s): Dalya M. Sachs

"I think there are as many ways of surviving

-Philip K., quoted in Holocaust Testimonies

In the 1976 Appendix to an annotated edition of Se questo e un uomo*

By nature, I am not prone to hatred. I consider it a bestial and primitive

hatred, in the sense of a primal urge for revenge, for suffering to be

That perhaps his personality and sensibility are exemplified in the

questo e un uomo, it may be salutary to keep in mind Robert Musil's

The multiplicity of generic definitions of the text is emblematic of

Notwithstanding this disclaimer about its formal weaknesses, the

I. Shifting Voices and Temporal Multiplicity

"Grammar does not possess a final tense."

No single genre or voice, no pre-established structure, would have

arrived deportees among whom he is included, and the horrific

stripped and given prison-clothes, Levi first remarks: "each of us

What Levi expresses here is not so much the condition in which he

had inhabited a sentence before by introducing in the present tense

ing the Lager; and the comprehensiveness of the description of

This observation demands a later knowledge of events than he pos-

poralities: in the past tense of Levi's Lager days he comes to under-

and it informs both his survival and transcription of Auschwitz. And,

We would now like to invite the reader to contemplate the possible

Throughout the book the almost covert (because so integrated)

II. Intellectual Resistance

"We don't choose a moral response, we

-Michael Frayn, Constructions35

In a world of symbolism, Levi resists the paradox that says that

despite its so-called meaninglessness. A rejection of the symbolic

. . . Levi [completely] reverses customary judgments about the Camps. If

By choosing the exceptionally "good" day, experience, or point of

predicated upon and returns constantly to address the torture he

The following chapter title itself epitomizes the tendency to inte-

This ability to recognize the element of luck ("It is lucky" or "e

result of a convergence of fortuitous circumstances whose causes

"This book means to contribute to the

also sets itself a more ambitious goal, to try

-Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

If we remember one of Levi's earliest realizations about the Lager,

For the same reasons that Se questo e un uomo elicits a self-questioning

An apology is in order. This very book is drenched in memory; what's

The element of memory in the project of reformulating events and

And precisely because time has passed, memory intercedes and

It is in themselves that both Montaigne and Levi make their judg-

The analogy which Levi formulates to explain his ambivalence

In Inferno, Ugolino only agrees to speak to Dante at the thought that

open and festering (this is exactly what Levi takes exception to in

from which it stems. Because, otherwise, as Benjamin cautions, "ev-

1 Primo Levi, "Appendix to the annotated edition of "Se questo e un uomo," my

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